07:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Bite-sized MobileRead for your weekend pleasure:

Miscellaneous - Announcements

• Coming soon: MobileRead Chat - Testers wanted!

08:42 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

We are soon ready to launch a new chat system. It will replace our little shoutbox, which has never been of much practical use.

A few facts about the new system:

• It's based on the popular IRC protocol.
• Nickname registration, chat channel registration, and other services are available.
• Forum integration: Your forum name will be automatically reserved as your nickname.
• Host cloaking: To protect your privacy, your IP address or hostname will be "cloaked" behind a pretty mobileread.com address.
• Webchat is available. It communicates through secure layers with the chat server. Any other IRC client works too.

We are now looking for a handful of testers. The only requirement is that you are an active MobileRead member and that you are familiar with IRC.

If you are interested, please send me a quick PM.

Alex

07:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Been away? Fear not! Here is your chance to check out what appeared on our frontpage this week:

E-Book General - News

• Kindle Freetime Unlimited Subscription Service

E-Book Readers - Amazon Kindle

• Kindle Paperwhite Jailbreak (5.2.0 - 5.3.1)

02:38 PM by fjtorres in E-Book General | News

One step closer to "netflix-for-books".
Adult version under consideration.

Press Release: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?&docId=1000863021

Kindle FreeTime Unlimited is the first-ever all-in-one subscription that brings together all the types of content that kids and parents love - books, games, educational apps, movies and TV shows. With unlimited access to thousands of hand-picked titles for kids ages 3-8, parents don't have to spend time (and money) guessing what their kids will enjoy, and kids can explore a world of age-appropriate content on their own - no ads, no in-app purchases

Priced at $4.99 per month for one child, $9.99 per month Family account (up to 6 kids)
PRIME members get it at $2.99 and $6.99, respectively.

CNET Report with Video: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19736_7...ption-service/

Looking at it another way, the service is similar to what Amazon is serving up to Prime members in terms of free video streaming of select videos and once-a-month borrowing of titles from the company's Kindle Lending Library -- but FreeTime Unlimited extends into the realm of apps and games and has no restrictions on how many books kids can read per month.

Amazon lists Andrews McMeel Publishing, Chronicle Books, DC Comics, Disney, HIT Entertainment, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Marvel, Nickelodeon, PBS and Sesame Workshop among its launch partners.

Larsen highlighted that apps would have all in-app payments, advertisements and social media removed. He also said that not only would videos be available for streaming, but they could be downloaded for on-the-go-use as well, when a WiFi connection wasn't available. It's unclear what, if any videos, are already available for free streaming to Prime members.

As for Amazon launching a premium subscription service for adult-oriented content, Larsen said nothing was in the works but anything was possible.

"We want to see how this goes," he said. "But we think it's a compelling offering for very affordable price."

Alas, Kindle FreeTime Unlimited won't be available to owners of the original Kindle Fire (2011), but Larsen didn't rule it out coming to that device in the future. Owners of the latest Kindle tablets will get a chance to sample the new service for free for a month.

12:33 PM by ixtab in Amazon Kindle | Kindle Developer's Corner

The preferred jailbreak method is now HERE.

Original post:

07:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Ok kids, time for the weekly roundup of what we've covered this week:

E-Book General - Reading Recommendations

• December 2012 Run-Off Vote

01:54 PM by WT Sharpe in Reading Recommendations | Book Clubs

December 2012 Mobile Read Book Club Run-Off Vote

Help us choose a book as the December 2012 eBook for the Mobile Read Book Club by voting in this run-off poll. It will be open for 3 days, and all MobileRead members are invited to participate. The vote this month will be visible.

We will start the discussion thread for this book on December 20th. Select from the following two choices:

• I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
Amazon (US) / B&N / BooksOnBoard / Kobo / Sony

• Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: PRC / Gutenberg EPUB / Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Dymocks Australia / Kobo / Sony Reader Store

07:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

It's time again for our roundup on all the stuff we posted on our frontpage this past week.

E-Book General - Reading Recommendations

• December 2012 Book Club Nominations
• December 2012 Book Club 1st Vote

Miscellaneous - Announcements

• MobileRead's 10th Birthday Giveaway Winners!